Bennu, Asteroid Sample

An Asteroid Sample Just Changed What We Know About Life in Our Solar System
The OSIRIS-REx mission returned to the sample to Earth in September of 2023, and these studies show that it contains amino acids, nucleobases, and minerals known as evaporites—all elements of life’s building blocks.
NASA brought back samples from asteroid Bennu. They revealed clues about the possible origins of life.
A NASA spacecraft has returned asteroid samples that hold not only the pristine building blocks for life but also the salty remains of an ancient water world.
Asteroid Bennu Samples Contain Building Blocks of Life
Samples of Bennu were brought back to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft in 2023. Now, a pair of newly published papers reveal that the samples contain precursors to life that formed in a watery environment—a watery environment very similar to the one that prevailed on Earth before life emerged up to four billion years ago.
Bennu asteroid samples yield watery history, key molecules for life
When asteroids like Bennu hit the young Earth, they could have provided a complete package of complex molecules and the ingredients essential to life, such as water, phosphate, and ammonia. Together, these components could have seeded Earth’s initially barren landscape to produce a habitable world.
Scientists find life’s ‘building blocks’ in asteroid Bennu samples
The meteor fragments returned by OSIRIS-REx shed light on the entwined history of water and the chemical ingredients of life in the solar system.
Building blocks of life identified in sample collected from asteroid Bennu
This artist’s concept shows NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft descending towards asteroid Bennu to collect a sample of the asteroid’s surface. NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona Scientists studying the sample collected in 2023 from asteroid Bennu have announced a dramatic finding: they have identified the key building blocks of life within the sample.
NASA Uncovers Life’s Building Blocks in Asteroid Bennu’s Pristine Sample
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission delivered samples from asteroid Bennu, revealing crucial molecules linked to life, including amino acids and nucleobases found in DNA and RNA. The presence of ammonia and formaldehyde suggests conditions ripe for forming complex molecules in space.
Are we all aliens? NASA's returned asteroid samples hold the ingredients of life from a watery world
The findings provide the strongest evidence yet that asteroids may have planted the seeds of life on Earth and that these ingredients were mingling with water almost immediately.
Asteroid may have planted 'building blocks of life' on Earth, groundbreaking new NASA study finds
NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft mission has delivered a sample of the asteroid Bennu to Earth and it has been found to contain organic molecules that are key to life
Asteroid Bennu samples found to contain five nitrogenous bases crucial to supporting life
Asteroids, small airless bodies within the inner solar system, are theorized to have contributed water and chemical building ...
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Asteroid Bennu contains the 'seeds of life,' OSIRIS-REx samples reveal
Scientists have found all five nucelobases alongisde minerals essential for life as we know it on the potentially hazardous ...
Building blocks of life found in samples from asteroid Bennu
Rock and dust samples retrieved by NASA from the asteroid Bennu exhibit some of the chemical building blocks of life, ...
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Asteroid Bennu came from a distant, lost world of salty ponds
Asteroid Bennu seems to have come from a long-lost world on the fringes of the solar system, where saltwater pooled and dried ...